Welcome back Year 4. All of Year 4 have made a wonderful start to the year and have settled into their new classes and routines. They are trying to have a growth mindset and approach all challenges in a positive manner.

In English, we have been building on our knowledge of volcanoes from Year 3 and have written a poem and a description of the volcanic eruption of Mount Vesuvius, which covered Pompeii during the Roman Era. We have been using the book Escape from Pompeii as a basis for our work. we have been revising fronted adverbials and expanded noun phrases to help us make our writing more interesting. In Reading, we have read extracts from Oliver and the Seawigs and Aesop's Fables and have used them to practice our retrieval and inference skills.

In Maths, we have built onto our knowledge of place value and have been exploring the value of each of the digits in a 4 digit number and exploring number patterns that increase or decrease in groups of 10,100 or 1000. We are beginning to look at ways to round 4 digit numbers to the nearest 10, 100 or 1000.

Our Humanities focus is The Romans and we have taken part in a re-enactment of the Romans (Topaz Class) invading Britain and conquering the Celts (Amethyst Class). We have also created timelines showing the key events in the Roman Era.

In Science, we have begun to look at sources of electricity and how electricity can be converted into movement, sound, heat and light. In PE, we have been practising walking and balancing in a range of ways and making sure we are moving in a straight line.

We have begun our ukulele lessons in Music and have learnt the correct stance for playing and how to strum our first note. We are already sounding quite melodic. Last week, during our Art lesson, we used charcoal to create light and dark in a picture of a sphere .

We are practising our Times Tables using Times Tables Rockstars and the Sound check feature. Please practice this at home as well as the children need to have rapid recall of all their Times Tables by the end of Year 4.